Poet Mark DeFoe was born in Oklahoma and raised in Kansas. He earned a BA and an MA in English from Oklahoma State University and a PhD from the University of Denver. He is the author of the poetry collections Air (1998), Aviary (2001), The Green Chair (2003), Mark DeFoe’s Greatest Hits (2004), and The Rock and the Pebble (2006), and his chapbook, Ten Scenes with Mocking Bird, won the 2009 Tennessee Chapbook Award.